UNC-Notre Dame Quotes

North Carolina 83, Notre Dame 66 · February 12, 2018
Postgame Quotes
North Carolina Head Coach Roy Williams

Opening Statement
"It was very frustrating at times, but at about the five-and-a-half-minute mark we started scoring and we got lucky they missed two or three in a row. All of a sudden, it went from a two-point game to about 10 or 11 pretty quickly. I've never been as frustrated about our defense screen on the ball as I was tonight, but we were fortunate they missed a couple of shots there. Earlier in the game, we wanted to get [Martinas] Geben in foul trouble. We got him two fouls and the guy they bring in, four [man], makes five three's out of five attempts so sometimes you shouldn't wish for things but I thought that our team, 57 percent in the second half, and Notre Dame was trying too. I think they're better defensively than we are, I don't know if that's what Michael [Brey] would say but I'm still trying to convince my team we've got to be able to guard people a little bit better, and they're sort of making me think they think they can outscore people but I know that's not true when you want to win the bigger games. But I feel great about the bunch. I was a little worried about Luke [Maye.] I was really worried about Joel [Berry] Joel had to go to the dentist at about 3 o'clock this afternoon and didn't feel very good but I said something to him the other day about his field goal percentage because he was 8-15. I think he was over 50 percent the other night too. Theo [Pinson], look at that, had ten rebounds, 16 points and five assists. He was really active and Luke wasn't the Luke that we know. He was eight and eight. Matt Farrell, this half, he was 0-9 and I thought he dominated the first half because he's really a good player. We caught them on a night that they might have been tired from playing on Saturday and traveling because 4-27 for Matt and TJ [Gibbs Jr.] and they're really good players."

On primary issue with ball screening
"The other guys were standing there watching. Two guys involved the screen on the ball and the other three have got to be involved. You watch Virginia play and they do it better than anybody so in the last three or four minutes we changed our defense and went back to regular, and I just like being more aggressive and that helped a bit too. Everybody's got to get involved and we had some conscientious objectors out there."

On Luke Maye's well-being
"He's played a lot of minutes, a lot of basketball and beating up himself with a lot of guys. If I had to say one guy that needs a rest more than anybody I'd probably say Luke."

On Joel Berry's pull-up jumper starting the winning run
"He's a tough little nut. He's got a bad tooth, but he's got a big heart. I'd rather him have a bad tooth than a good heart. I think he's such a tough kid and guarding those two guys for the whole game is hard to do as well, but he made a big shot for us. Theo [Pinson] made a big shot for us right at the foul line. Luke [Maye] had two straight assists in that stretch there too. They're a little bit tired. I told them I was never coming in here if they lost. I wasn't going to say it was three games in five days, I thought it was a great challenge. I don't like it. I hope it never happens to us again, but I didn't treat it like that. I treated it as an opportunity. We're the only team that can win three wins in five days until we get to the tournament."

On three-win stretch
"If you win three, there's nothing second. Offensively, we did a better job of moving the ball in one stretch. In the second half, in that five minute stretch and in the other two games we did a much better job of moving the ball basically the whole game. We had some good stretches offensively. We've got to get better defensively though. I really have, I'm serious guys, I have had a team that's led the nation in defensive field-goal percentage. Now we're 327^th out of 351 or something like that but I didn't get that dumb that fast."

Notre Dame Head Coach Mike Brey

Opening Statement
"Only three people at my press conferences in South Bend, geez. But yeah, I love how we fought but they had about a three-minute stretch where they were unbelievable offensively and certainly couldn't absorb that. We gave ourselves a chance. I thought they really defended our guards well tonight. Our guards have been playing well. They really defended Matt [Farrell] and T.J. [Gibbs] well and that was probably a big difference in the game."

On Carolina being different when able to make 3-pointers
"I was worried about getting scorched from out there. We only gave up six. When they are playing well and able to score it…. They can put numbers up so easy. I thought the only chance we would have had in here tonight was to score in the 80s and try to score with them… but not tonight. Sometimes people look like it's a disadvantage that they play three games in five days, the players love it and they're in a good rhythm. Sometimes when you're playing well you don't want to mess with it in practice. Just put the uniform on and play again. I think they found a really great rhythm in this stretch."

On John Mooney missing three free throws and messing with momentum
"Yeah, it really did and as swell as he has been from the floor that has been a little bit of his Achilles heel at times. You needed to make those. I thought we had a pretty good look down one, Farrell had a little runner in there. You almost have to take the lead a little bit and change the karma in the building. Again, our guys… we're battling, we're fighting. We are 2-2 on the back nine of our second nine, back half of our league games. If we can keep that around .500… If we could get to eight league wins and be 8-10, maybe that's good as it gets. Maybe we get Bonz [Bonzie Colson] back here, we should get him back at the end of the month, and we go to Brooklyn with him healthy and see if we can play our way in. That's our lot in life, we are very realistic on who we are."

On being effective defensively on Luke Maye
"We didn't really do anything different. We had a lot of different guys on him. I think what we probably did was off of their non-shooters we helped a little bit and jammed it up. He did a good job of not forcing anything and letting some other guys really get involved."

On being one of the few ACC who offered him a scholarship out of high school
"Oh, I wanted him bad. I couldn't even beat Carolina on a walk-on situation. I'm a great recruiter, huh?"

On if he saw this Luke Maye potential
"Oh, yes. Yeah, he reminded me of [Luke] Harangody when I saw him in the summer. But, he is where he should be and I am really happy for him. No one is playing better than him in the whole country. He's fabulous."

North Carolina Players
Kenny Williams, Junior Guard
On spurt at end of the game
"You know a lot of the credit goes to Doug [Halverson] and Jonas [Sahratian], making sure our bodies were straight, making sure we had fresh legs, and then Coach [Roy Williams] also being aware and dialing down our practices. That was a lot of it. I mean my legs really weren't as bad as I thought they would be going into it. A lot of the credit goes to them for being aware of the stretch we were going into and helping us out as much as they could."

On pulling away after Notre Dame brought it to a one-point game
"They started missing shots and we got out on transition a little bit, and then once the crowd got into it at the end, I think we fed off that. We just tightened up a little more defensively and forced them to miss a couple more outside shots. And then we kind of warmed down because we started running early. They had some guys play heavy minutes so we were able to get back out in transition at the end of the game and get some easy layups."

On team feelings about four-game winning streak
"Like we're turning the corner. This stretch, especially this three-game stretch, was huge for us. We picked our effort up a little bit and you could tell, and then we started finding our groove on the offensive end. We moved the ball well tonight and we didn't turn the ball over either so if we can continue to do that and continue to crash the boards the way we are, I think we'll be fine in the stretch."

Theo Pinson, Senior Forward
On the early 22-6 run
"We kept attacking. Coach [Steve Robinson] made a good point, each game is different. We were going to keep fighting. They knew we played three games in five days, so they were going to keep fighting the whole game. We just wanted to keep going out there and attacking. I had a mismatch so I just tried to keep attacking in the paint and see what could happen."

On whether this is the best flow the team has been in all season
"Definitely. You can just tell the group we start with, we're meshing. We understand when we gang rebound and run, it's hard to guard us in transition. We just wear you down. I'm not going to lie, I thought it was going to be tough for us to wear them down because we're playing three games in five days. But we end up wearing them down. We condition for this type of thing. We did a good job tonight."

On getting upcoming days off
"A lot of sleeping. I'm going to sleep, sit on my couch and watch other people beat up on each other."

Joel Berry II, Senior Guard
On playing the most minutes in this three-game stretch
"I honestly feel pretty good. I've done a great job of keeping my body in shape, and that was part of the reason why I wanted to come back this year. I want to make sure that I do what I can and just get better with stretching and learning how to recover. I've done a great job with that throughout this stretch and throughout this whole year, honestly. It has helped, so coming out to this game I feel pretty good."

On winning this three-game stretch
"Maybe we should play more games where we have back-to-back-to-back games like that because we've been playing some pretty good basketball. I honestly think it's our chemistry coming together. Cam [Johnson] came back in the middle of the season, and we really didn't get a chance to gel with him. Now starting four guards, I think we're starting to hit at the right time and on the defensive end I think we're starting to get better and better each and every day. I think this was a good stretch for us."

On team morale
"Coach [Roy Williams] put up a challenge and we have to get better on the defensive end. I think that the biggest thing is us not giving up so many three's. It's hard to play with teams when they're knocking down 10 to 15 three-pointers a game. Even though we gave up a couple to just one guy tonight, I think we've done a great job of making sure we're getting out to the three-point line and guarding it. I think that's a reason to our success."

Players Mentioned

Joel Berry II

Luke Maye

Theo Pinson

Kenny Williams

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